Darlene Handy of Baltimore holds up a sign during a rally to support raising the minimum wage in Maryland.

One: Seven Nobel laureates in economics endorse the higher minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016, saying it does not lead to fewer jobs.

Two: Job losses from raising the minimum wage are negligible. Minimum wage has already been raised 23 times. Every time it was raised it was opposed by few people who said “it is going to lose jobs and wreck the economy”, which is factually untrue, as study after study has proven.

Three: It is a myth that small business owners can’t afford to pay their workers more and therefore don’t support an increase in the minimum wage. In fact, a June 2014 survey found that more than three out of five small business owners support increasing the minimum wage to $10.10.

Four: The value of the minimum wage has fallen dramatically. Since the minimum wage was last raised in 2009, the price of apples went up 16 percent, bacon 67 percent, cheddar cheese 21 percent, coffee 27 percent, ground beef 39 percent,and milk 21 percent. The minimum wage went up 0 percent. Plus, in the 1960s the minimum wage was essentially half the average wage. If that was still the case it would be $12.50 an hour.

Five: Saying we have a “free market” that will take care of workers is a myth. No corporations rely on the mythical “free market”, why should workers? Corporations lobby like crazy all the time in Washington and before every state and local government for direct and indirect public assistance. All levels of government provide widespread corporate welfare so why not provide some help to low wage workers? 

The Wall Street bailout cost more than $200 billion. Fifty billionaires received taxpayer-funded farm subsidies in the past two decades. Corporate jet subsidy is $3 billion a year. Special tax breaks for hedge fund managers allow them to pay only a 15 percent tax rate, while the people they invest for pay twice that much and their secretaries pay a higher percentage. The home mortgage deduction is $70 billion a year, with 77 percent going to people with incomes of over $100,000 per year. Giving workers more money is small potatoes compared with what corporations and the rich are receiving all the time.

Six: In fact, one way to look at this is that low minimum wage laws are government subsidies to low wage businesses. What do working people do if they do not have enough to eat or get sick or need housing? They turn to government for public benefits. For example in the fast food industry, alone research by the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley documents that taxpayers pay about $243 billion each year in indirect subsidies to the fast food industry because they pay wages so low that taxpayers must put up $243 billion to pay for public benefits for their workers.

Seven: There is widespread religious support for living wages. Catholic support for living wages has been taught since 1891. In 1940, U.S. Catholic Bishops stated: “The first claims of labor, which takes priority over any claims of owners or profit, respects the right to a living wage.”

 Protestant churches were first on the record for living wages since 1908. Religious support for living wages has a long history and has been recently been reaffirmed by the Episcopal Church, the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Methodist Church.

Eight: Worker productivity has gone up much faster than wages. Workers are already much more productive. Using the 1968 minimum wage as benchmark, if minimum wage grew at same rate as worker productivity it would have reached $21.72 per hour.

Nine: It is a myth that the minimum wage is only for teens and entry level workers. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would impact more than 15 million workers, including 4.7 million working moms who would get a raise. So would 2.6 million working dads for a total of 7 million parents.

10: There is widespread bipartisan support for raising the minimum wage among the public. In a 2015 poll, 75 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of Republicans, support raising the minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020.

Bonus point: You know the minimum wage is too low when Walmart announces it will raise its minimum wage to $10 an hour by February next year.

As President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1933: “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” 

-Bill Quigley teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans. This article originally appeared on Counterpunch.org